Gunnawah

by Ronni Salt

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

It's 1974 in the Riverina

The weather is hot

But the body in the Murray River is stone cold . . .

A captivating and compulsive crime thriller about guns, drugs and a young woman dead on the money

Riverina 1974:

When nineteen-year-old farmgirl Adelaide Hoffman applies for a cadetship at the Gunnawah Gazette, she sees it as her ticket out of a life too small for her. Its owner, Valdene Bullark, sees something of the girl she once was in young Adelaide.

Val puts Adelaide straight to work. What starts as a routine assignment covering an irrigation project soon puts Adelaide on the trail of a much bigger story. Water is money in farming communities, and when Adelaide starts asking questions, it's as if she's poked a stick in a bull ant's nest. Violence follows. Someone will do whatever it takes to stop Adelaide and Val finding out how far the river of corruption and crime runs.

Shady deals. Vested interests. A labyrinth of lies. It seems everyone in Gunnawah has a secret to keep. But how many want to stop Adelaide dead?

Set deep in the heart of rural Australia during the era of Gough Whitlam, pub brawls and flared jeans, Gunnawah is a compulsive crime thriller of corruption, guns and drugs from Australian Noir's most arresting new voice.

Release date: January 1, 2025

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 352

Sample

Adelaide Hoffman tried to remember a time when running by the river brought her joy, but as hard as she tried, nothing came to mind. She ran in a straight line, the whites of her eyes flashing, left, right, left again, so hard to see in the murky dawn light. The main bridge over the river into town only took her a minute to cross. She glanced quickly over her shoulder in the semi-darkness, dirty blonde strands stuck to her face, her feet thudding in time with her frantic breath.

Two signs sat stacked at the end of the bridge as it dribbled into town. Welcome To New South Wales, the first one shouted to anybody crossing the Murray River who didn’t understand the border between Victoria and New South Wales or where the hell the bridge they were on was taking them.

The second sign sat slightly back, smaller, almost apologetic; Gunnawah. Pop: 989. The shire mayor had confidently announced he planned to get it over the 1000 mark before the end of 1974. But that had been last week at the lawn bowls club on New Year’s Eve, and nobody ever trusted what happened at the bowlo on New Year’s Eve.

Once over the bridge, Adelaide slowed her stride. Saddleback Lagoon sat only a short distance away, a misshapen billabong beside the river with still water so deep they said nobody had ever seen the bottom, not that anybody would want to with the bottom filled with possum carcasses and Murray cod shit. ‘There’s cod down there so fricken big they could swallow you whole, Adelaide,’ her older brother had told her once and she’d laughed and pushed him off his dirt-bike.

The sky rim glowed lemon with the promise of the rising sun and the crackling heat of a Riverina day. At the water’s edge, the ground vibrated with the thud of approaching feet. Tadpoles mouthed at the water’s glossed lid where her moving shadow cast a shade across the surface. Huff-thud, huff-thud.

Bloated air filled with the sharp tannin scent of soaking eucalyptus leaves. Clumps of white cockatoos watched from distant gum boughs, spread like dandruff through the limbs. From far off in the distance, a semi-trailer ground down through its gears.

Skidding to a stop beside the lagoon, Adelaide leaned down at the water’s edge, cupping her hands, splashing at her face.

She lifted her head. Shit, was she late? Pivoting back toward the road, breathing in, breathing out, she ran. White shoes crackling on the crushed granite path, jumping puddles with well-worn precision, she ran along the gravel trimming the road flowing from the bridge, headed straight north into town. She ran.

On the road ahead, a white Holden ute with a black bull bar sat parked outside the Big H Farm Machinery & Supplies depot, the depot’s fence patchworked with signs. Adelaide ran toward it, slowing herself, wondering whether she’d left the keys on the seat or under the floor mat. It didn’t matter either way. Nobody locked their car in Gunnawah. Nobody locked anything. Not before that year anyway.

‘Mornin’, Adelaide,’ a wiry male said, walking toward her, ‘Glad to see ya found ya way back.’ His tanned face split with a streak of white from his grin. ‘Never know what’s down in them river bends after a good rain.’ He laughed, wiping his face, coming to a halt as if something important had just struck him. ‘Ya dad’s pump parts just rolled up. You shoulda hung around.’

Adelaide Hoffman wrenched down the back flap of the ute, pulling a red cap from the tray, shoving it on her head, winding the sweaty plait in underneath.

‘Probably Jimmy, but river-runs sure beat the hell out of hanging around here for an hour in the dark waiting for a delivery truck,’ she said.

She wanted to tell Jimmy why she ran, how nothing bothered her, how she left everything behind, how some days she thought she might keep running as far as she could, away from the town, the farm, just away. But when her mother had suggested therapy might help her recovery, a session with Jimmy Doohan at the local farm machinery depot wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind.

She grabbed the weight of the box on the opposite side to Jimmy, hoisting the Davey pump parts onto the ute tray. A slight walnut of a man, Jimmy had been a country jockey once, but a bad jumps fall and a deep affection for painkillers had finished that phase of his life. Now he owned the auto repair and tyre yard diagonally across the road from Big H. Jimmy Doohan’s Auto Repairs – We keep doohan! Jimmy had thought of that all by himself.

Adelaide leaned over the box. She towered over Jimmy, but then again, most people towered over Jimmy. Biceps flexed, mouth fixed, she dragged the box into the ute tray, before jumping behind the wheel, turning the engine.

‘Jesus, Adelaide, whatever your dad’s payin’ ya, it isn’t enough.’

She gunned the ute toward Federation Street, a hundred yards south back down the road. She knew the way.

***

Outside the Gunnawah Bakery the main street hummed with the early morning bustle of a country town of 989 people still looking to recruit the other eleven. Valdene Bullark nosed her gold Mercedes into a convenient parking spot, dragging her figure-eight-shaped body out the car door.

A few retired farmers stood alongside a Southern Riverina News Sold Here sign outside the newsagency. They swatted at flies above their hats, discussing the weekly lamb prices and filling in their morning until they retired to the shade of their new houses in town they’d never become used to. A passing cattle truck leaked piss out on to the road as it turned the corner into Federation Street, the farmers so immune to the stench they could barely smell it.

‘Morning, Wayne.’ Valdene nodded at a passing man with a folded-up racing guide in his left hand.

Wayne called back to her through the rollie held between his teeth, ‘Howareya, Val?’ As he concentrated on his shuffle, Adelaide Hoffman stepped out of her ute, cutting behind him, heading toward the bakery door, her cap pulled down over her flushed face.

Valdene pulled herself up. ‘Aha. Good morning, Adelaide. Fancy seeing you here so early in the day, love. All set for our big interview today?’

‘Oh yeah, Mrs Bullark, yes, sure. I’m just grabbing the bread for home and then um, I’ll have a shower, get fresh. I’ll be there on time.’ Adelaide scruffed her sneaker awkwardly along the concrete.

Outside the bakery, a few locals scampered through the rainbow fly strips hung over the front door. Early morning was the busiest time on a hot day, people eager to get their business done before the stinking heat of a Riverina day built up and sapped them of their energy.

Valdene slid her oversized sunglasses off her face, her left hand a blinding vision of rings and bracelets and any other decoration she could cram onto her arms. No point keeping it in the drawer, Col, she’d told her late husband before he decided to walk home in the dead of the night two years ago almost to the day.

Since that night, Valdene Bullark – working-class girl made good, former Kings Cross tenant and now sole owner of the town’s Gunnawah Gazette – had managed to keep her life and her business together. But only just.

The local printing and newspaper business had been a haphazard disaster when she and Colin had bought it in the autumn of 1942 from Peter the Piss-Head, the retired drunk who’d inherited it from his parents and pretended he could run the business. All Colin and Valdene found when they walked into the offices of the Gunnawah Gazette was an old printing press, a filing cabinet full of Playboy magazines and a lifetime supply of empty Johnnie Walker bottles.

Valdene and Adelaide stepped into the bakery together. ‘It’s okay, Adelaide, love. I’m sure you’ll scrub up just fine. I’m looking forward to our little chat. I’ll see you later at, what time …?’

‘At twelve-thirty.’ Adelaide said.

Valdene headed to the counter, reaching for a brown bag labelled Valdene’s vanilla slices x 6. ‘I’m sure you will, love,’ she said. ‘And listen. Enough with the Mrs Bullark. You’re what, twenty, twenty-one now?’

‘I’m nineteen.’

‘Okay, nineteen. But you’re out of school. You can call me Valdene.’ She scooped up her bag of vanilla slices before disappearing back through the fly strips in the door.

The Hoffman farm gate sat eight miles from the western edge of town, which was officially defined by the railway crossing over the Hovell Highway. To the north, the town began in the dribble of expanding grass at the sportsground housing the netball courts and football oval, all about to be renamed the AJ Heneghan Recreation Reserve in a free family barbecue ceremony in April.

The word was the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, would be there to open it. The people of Gunnawah had talked of nothing else since the news first appeared on the front page of the Gazette last month as an exclusive. Valdene had a long friendly association with the neighbouring Labor politician, Al Grassby, and nobody ever said Valdene didn’t get the exclusives.

Adelaide accelerated over the railway crossing, where only six people had been killed since it opened in 1900, the shire mayor liked to boast. She had both windows open to listen for the vibrations of oncoming trains, like all the local kids had been taught. You had to look out for yourself out there, out in the isolated grasslands.

Her mind drifted back to town. After what happened last year, she knew things had to change. She couldn’t stay locked away in her room forever. She had to get a job, save as much money as she could to get out of Gunnawah. She’d probably have to pretend to be nice to all the neighbours and smile the same stiff, corpse-like smile her mother did, but she wasn’t sure things would ever get desperate enough to smile at all the neighbours.

If she got this job she could head to Melbourne, to university, study birds, literature, go anywhere where people didn’t know who she was. Anywhere where she wasn’t Carl and Katherine Hoffman the local farmers’ daughter – that poor Adelaide Hoffman. She pressed her foot harder on the accelerator.

Officially she’d been driving on a licence for three years, but like most farm kids, she’d driven cars and machinery since she could reach the pedals. Sometimes, when she was younger, she’d even tied bricks to her feet for better reach. Adelaide knew how to handle the open road. As she sat behind the wheel admiring her driving skills, the grey blur of a kangaroo shot out of the morning shadows, headlong into the bull bars. Loaves of fresh bread tumbled to the floor.

She swerved sideways to an unsteady stop. In the rear-view mirror, she could see the roo writhing in pain, struggling to get up. Adelaide muttered, ‘Shit, shit, shit’ under her breath, biting her lip, jamming her cap backwards on her head.

Behind the front bench seat, she reached for the coldness of the .22 rifle her father kept there. The rigid steel of the barrel met her hand just underneath a muddle of horse blankets and dog leads. She flipped open the ashtray, grabbed two bullets, slotting them into her pocket as she strode along the bitumen toward the struggling roo, the rifle casually slung from her right hand.

Blood seeped from the roo’s mouth, eyes wild with fear. Adelaide pulled the rod up, slipping two bullets into the open chamber. ‘Shhh, shhh. It’s alright, big fella,’ she cooed. Her words meant nothing now. It was too far gone to care. Adelaide Hoffman, farm girl, one time under-16 shotgun champion, pulled the rifle butt up hard into her side. She didn’t blink. In under two seconds she’d lined the rifle up to the dying roo’s head and pressed the trigger.

***

The flyscreen door on the back veranda whined opened and clappered shut. A dog followed Adelaide in through the door, stepping past rows of battered workboots and an open tin of Dubbin wax. A few hats hung off cast-iron hooks on the wall, an old timber dresser near the door offering a collection of open seed packets and a half-empty box of bullets.

Adelaide crouched down to her black and tan kelpie, scrunched his ears in her hands. ‘Can’t come in, Sly. The old girl will see you, you know what she’s like.’ Sly licked her hand. ‘Dead, Sly. Stay dead.’ He flattened down underneath the dresser. The secret was theirs.

Her father’s voice bellowed out from the cooler depths of the house. ‘That you, Adelaide?’

‘Yep.’

Her mother’s voice joined in from an open kitchen door. ‘You pick up the bread?’ Her father came down the hallway, a gangly looking ginger, a slight limp to his gait as he pulled at the belt on his pants. ‘Never mind the bread, what about the pump parts.’ He smiled at Adelaide, then stopped. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing. Well, nothing much. Just had to kill a roo, that’s all. Yes, I got the bread, Mum – and the newspapers.’

‘Well, you usually forget something so that’s a start I suppose,’ her mother said.

‘Yeah, leave her, Kath.’ Adelaide’s father grabbed the teapot, pouring a quick black stream into a mug. He glanced at the large box Adelaide placed on the table.

A few hairs still stuck to the sweat on her neck. Adelaide had never cared how she looked. She didn’t bother with makeup, barely knew what it was. Fashion hated her as much as she hated it. She would, in all likelihood, die if she ever ate a peanut but – she could gap a spark plug, head tackle a ram. It was only when Adelaide had to deal with people that she fell apart. Sometimes she thought she hated people. People confused her, they scared her. Dogs, birds, engines, nature – none of that did.

Carl Hoffman dragged the cardboard box across the bumps in the table. The house pump was down. He had no time to lose to get it up and running before the early January sun made it impossible to work outside. He looked across at his daughter, ‘Thanks Adds. Cuppa?’ She nodded.

‘See anyone in town?’ her mother asked, scanning the headlines of the folded newspapers next to the box.

‘Only old Jimmy Doohan,’ Adelaide said. Her mother’s top lip curled slightly. ‘Oh, and Mrs Bullark, I mean Valdene … out the front of the bakery. She said she was looking forward to our interview.’

‘Ah, so it’s Valdene now, is it? And you haven’t got the job yet. Mind you, this rain has brought quite a lot to do around here as well.’ Katherine stared through the kitchen window to the paddocks beyond the Moreton Bay fig, eyebrow raised, a pose Adelaide had witnessed most of her childhood. Beyond her mother’s gaze, dishwater-coloured mobs of merinos grazed on distant wheat stubble.

‘She told me to call her Valdene now.’

Her father looked up, winking at her. Adelaide winked back.

‘But is the poor thing still there or did you kill it outright, Adds?’ he asked.

‘Kill Valdene Bullark outright, Carl?’

‘No, Kath.’ Carl put his mug down, heavier than was necessary. ‘The roo. Adelaide said she killed a roo. On the way home.’

Katherine pulled her lips tight, reverting to her distant stare. ‘Oh.’

‘I had to shoot it though.’

‘What did you shoot, Adds? You shooting before breakfast?’ A boy about thirteen or fourteen slid on his socks into the kitchen. A comb sat stuck in his hair; a thin boy, halfway between childhood and adolescence, sunburnt ears and bulbous knees. Katherine turned to pull the comb from her son’s hair. He dodged and pulled his right arm up into a rifle shooting stance. He aimed his imaginary rifle barrel at the back of his mother’s head, pressing down hard on the trigger, ‘Pheuww-pheuw.’

‘C’mon, Eddie.’ Adelaide pushed her brother. ‘The bus’ll be here soon.’

Their mother turned back to the window, continuing her thousand-yard stare without shifting her gaze.

***

‘Now then Adelaide, thanks for making it back into town.’ Valdene paused, thinking for a moment. ‘And you look real nice too, love. Can I get you a cup of coffee? Or a cold drink?’ Valdene settled into the leatherette chair she’d ordered from a Sydney catalogue only last month. Catalogue deliveries to Gunnawah were more reliable since the new local federal member, Michael Di Rossi, had organised better postal trucks, Valdene had been told. There wasn’t a lot in Gunnawah Valdene wasn’t told.

‘Ah yes, yes please, a glass of water would be good, thanks.’ Adelaide cleared her throat, pulling her chair in closer to Valdene’s desk.

Valdene hinged her head back. ‘Keith … you out there?’

Keith’s bespectacled face appeared at the crack in the door. ‘Yes?’

‘Ah, Keith. You know Adelaide Hoffman. She’s here for the cadetship.’

Keith entered the room, a watery-eyed, middle-aged man with skin the same shade as the shirt poking out beneath his burgundy knitted vest. Peculiar on a January day, but a normal outfit for Keith Dobson, occasional printer, part-time country journalist of no particular note and Valdene’s eternally devoted right-hand man.

‘Yes of course, well … I know your parents.’ Keith nodded to Adelaide, polite, inoffensive.

‘Adelaide would like a glass of water please, Keith. Or get Indira to grab one if you’re busy.’

‘No that’s fine. Back in a minute.’ Keith scuttled past his wife, Indira, seated behind the Gazette’s front counter. Indira Dobson picked up a pen as her husband passed, scribbling into a black diary: Adelaide Hoffman, arrived 12.15 p.m. Here for the cadetship. Drinks water.

Valdene shoved a pair of rhinestone glasses onto her nose, poring over the photographs Adelaide had placed on the desk. Mainly photos of birds, more birds, local landmarks, Valdene noticed they were sharp, focused, carefully composed. Almost artistic.

‘You take all these yerself?’

‘Yes. I’ve always taken photos. Not always of birds, though.’ Adelaide hesitated. ‘But mainly birds.’

‘And you say you got As for all your essays in school?’ Valdene asked, looking over her glasses.

‘Not all of them, but most of them, yes.’ Adelaide plucked at the hair to the side of her face. ‘I did really well in school, and umm, I read.’ She thought before adding, ‘A lot.’

‘What do you read? Newspapers? Magazines?’

‘Yes, and a lot of novels, books about birds. And plays. I love plays.’

‘Plays?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve always wanted to go to univ—’ She stopped.

‘Go to …?’

Adelaide blurted, ‘The Universal in Melbourne to see a play.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Valdene smiled to herself. She flicked through the loose-leaf pages of writing beside the photos, smiling up at Adelaide every now and again to reassure her that all was well and Keith’s water would be there soon and nothing inside those walls would hurt her.

The door reopened and Keith entered with a glass of water. A high-pitched dog bark started from the corner of the room. Adelaide jumped.

‘Shuddup, Elvis!’ Valdene spun toward a Pekingese perched on a window cushion. The Pekingese wagged its rump, snuffling itself back into its bed.

‘Sorry about that, love, he’s just highly strung. The dog that is, not Keith. Now, here’s the deal. The job’s difficult sometimes and sometimes it’s quiet, but I can tell you one thing – it’s never boring. I’ll be here with you on Monday, Thursday, Friday usually, but you’ll be working with Keith and Indira the other days,’ Valdene explained.

Apart from being Keith’s wife, Indira Dobson, nee Singh, was the granddaughter of one of the town’s only Indian hawkers. Thin-lipped and thin-kneed, she ran the office, the town sporting results, and kept a locked steel cabinet drawer under the counter where some said all the secrets of Gunnawah lived.

‘Is there anything else you want to tell me before you start?’ Valdene smiled over her glasses. ‘Anything I might need to know about you, or any way we can help you somehow if you start work here?’

‘Umm, no, no.’ Adelaide shifted uncomfortably in her seat before chewing her nails. She had carefully buried everything in her mind she possibly could, but still in that moment, she wanted to run. She told herself to stay seated instead. She distracted herself by staring hard at Valdene’s brushed-up black hair, like an enormous helmet protecting Valdene from the outside world. A silver streak of hair ran from Valdene’s forehead, disappearing into the elaborately teased dyed brunette mass at the back.

The townspeople said Valdene kept her age hidden, but nothing could be further from the truth, a moral that never usually bothered the townspeople anyway. She just didn’t tell anybody her age, mainly because most people were too afraid to ask. The truth was, Valdene Lorraine Bullark was fifty-nine and contemplating selling the business in the middle of the year as a sixtieth birthday present to herself, just as long as she could get the business as healthy looking as she could. Valdene knew Adelaide Hoffman was the smartest thing to walk in the door at the Gunnawah Gazette, probably in all the years she’d run the newspaper. Hell, she knew it wasn’t Keith Dobson. Valdene also knew what Adelaide had gone through from the gossiping mouths of the town last year. Offering her a decent job was the least she could do. Besides, she’d been Adelaide once. Not that she would ever tell Adelaide that.

‘Yes, love.’ Her red lipstick crimpled at the corners. ‘Of course it’s your job. When can you start?’

‘I could start as soon as you like,’ Adelaide said.

Valdene stood up, placing one hand on Adelaide’s shoulder. Moles and freckles spread across every available space of Adelaide’s skin, proof of life as a child of northern European stock on a farm bleached calico by the Australian sun. Valdene nodded. ‘You can start this week then. Welcome to the circus, love.’

Elvis let out a shrill yap from the corner.

The rising sun glowed in a weak ribbon through the middle of Federation Street, turning the shadows of the buildings bordering the road into a row of black crocodile teeth. The shire mayor Barry Heneghan often boasted that Federation Street was the greatest main street in the whole of Gunnawah, as if there were any other main street in Gunnawah to skite about.

It wasn’t a planned town, none of the old Riverina towns were, at least not the ones before irrigation came in the 1920s, opening up the flat country into patchworked slabs of dull green. When people travelling through Gunnawah left the town and crossed the Murray River into the state of Victoria, all they found on the other side was a lonely Amoco roadhouse and a hundred thousand acres of sky.

***

‘Tinaaaaah!’ Valdene swung the art-deco door of the Apollo Café open in a full swoop. ‘Tinaaaaah,’ she called again.

Tina’s husband Kon emerged from a rear doorway at the sound of her voice.

‘Hello, we’ve got Kon out and about too,’ Valdene noted.

Kon Katopodis put his milkshake glass down on the formica counter, a dishcloth over his shoulder. Tall, with ringlets he plastered straight with Brylcream every morning, he moved his square-chested body like a man who wanted to be more than he was.

He called back across the counter at Valdene, ‘Morning neighbour.’ Kon peered past Valdene’s shoulder to the unmistakable figure of Adelaide Hoffman, standing behind her new boss doing her best to look shorter and less imposing than she was, a habit that had done nothing to reduce her height in all the years she’d practiced it.

‘Adelaide, so, you started the job already. Eleni told us.’

Kon and Tina’s eldest daughter Eleni was one of Adelaide’s small circle of friends, one of the very few girls her own age in the district Adelaide could stomach.

‘Yes, Mr K. It’s been two full weeks since I started the job now,’ Adelaide said, offering an anxious grin.

Tina Katopodis pushed through the door behind the counter. She wore a floral dress she’d bought on a family holiday twenty years ago. Tina stood a good ten inches shorter than her husband but she made up for her lack of height by talking like a hammer drill and looking everyone in the eye with focused precision.

‘Adelaide, what can I get you my darling?’ Tina hurried to the end of the bench, preparing to make a blue heaven malted.

‘Nothing at the moment, thanks, Mrs K. We’re here on official business.’

‘Oh.’

‘Sorry to disappoint you, Tina, Kon,’ Valdene said, squeezing into the upholstered booth. ‘I’ve got Adelaide with me on the official advertising sales and meet-and-greet tour. Mind you,’ Valdene snorted, ‘she knows everybody in town, so the meet-and-greet part’s not taking too long.’

‘You’re not coming to the council meeting this afternoon?’ Kon asked. ‘Who’s gonna photograph me then? It’s my second council meeting, Valdene – second. I advertise with you for twenty years and I’m not on the front of the paper yet?’ He held both hands up in a mock frame around his head. ‘Councillor Kon Katopodis!’

After much urging from Valdene and loyal frequenters of the Apollo-open-seven-days-a-week-milkshakes-in-all-flavours-Café, Kon had put his hand up for the Gunnawah Shire Council in the elections the previous year. Not that it had been too difficult given the shire divided itself into wards and nobody had contested the central ward at all until Kon had reluctantly put himself forward. Kon was, unsurprisingly, elected unopposed.

Tina took it all in her stride, as she did with everything Kon attempted. Truth be told, she was glad to have him out of the way for half a day; she probably would have preferred a whole day.

‘Kon, don’t worry, love. You’ll get your chance to star. Adelaide’s going to the council meeting this arvo with Keith. He’ll show her the ropes.’ Va. . .